


A Long Night

by vulcanhighblood



Series: One Stormy Night [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Pale, basically a lot of shouting, eridan screams, erikar - Freeform, feeding a wiggler is tricky business, i mean if u squint, idk tbh, its a thing okay, karkat and eridan have a wiggler to deal with, karkat is frantic, karkat screams a lot, kind of fluff, mostly just screaming, redrom, sort of, unnamed wiggler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcanhighblood/pseuds/vulcanhighblood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Otherwise titled “The continued adventures of Shouty Nubs and Fins McSlimy as they undertake the massive responsibility of raising a tiny wiggler and face their most daunting task yet: feeding the tiny monster.”<br/>Eridan and Karkat have posession of an orphaned wiggler. They have no idea what they've gotten themselves into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is part two of a series wherein Eridan shows up on Karkat's doorstep with a tiny wiggler. To see how THAT played out, feel free to check out part one, "One Stormy Night".

“Hey. Hey, Kar.”

You blink your eyes blearily, momentarily disoriented before the world settles into place. You’re in your hive… your respiteblock...in a pile? Something cold moves against your side. What the -- Eridan? Eridan fucking Ampora is engaged in an extremely lewd act, curled up against your side, the two of you sprawled in a giant fucking pile in the middle of your hive. You want to die. You want to shout obscenities. You're frozen for a long moment. Then something small tickles at your side, and it all comes rushing back.The wiggler. Eridan, clutching a soaked cape, earfins drooping, glasses streaming water, the very picture of misery and self-loathing. How could you say no to him when he looked ready to fall over at any moment? A small chirring sound brings you back to this moment, and you realize the wiggler is distressed. She’s moving agitatedly, and the noises coming from her small, still underdeveloped squawkblister seem to be getting louder and louder.

Eridan is looking at you, wide eyes ringed by thick lenses and even thicker frames. “I tried singin’ the lullaby but it’s not working,” he explains frantically.

The wiggler is getting louder with each passing second, seriously disturbing your calm. You cuddle the small thing, she really is pitiful, and shoosh her gently, giving her a few paps for good measure, but she only gets louder. You didn’t realize a wiggler could be this loud.

Eridan is watching you, as if you somehow have all the answers in this scenario. Fuck that. You have none of the answers, and this is all his fault anyway. “What did you do?” you demand.

“I didn’t do anythin’!” Eridan insists, though he doesn't complain when you push the wiggler into his arms, though his earfins are pushed back as if they’re trying to avoid taking in as much of the cacophonous din the wiggler is creating as possible. “Shush, shush,” he says, though of course this doesn’t work as Eridan is a terrible shoosher. Really, he has absolutely no technique whatsoever. Has all his time with Feferi taught him _nothing_? Fuck.

“What’s wrong with her?” Eridan asks you, earfins fluttering nervously, still pinned back to avoid catching the noise. He’s nearly shouting to be heard. “I don’t fucking know, what do I look like, a Lusus?” you shout back, wishing that crabdad were here. He’d know what to do. Sure, he’d probably make a lot of irritated gestures and clack at you a lot first, but you could take it if it meant having someone who knew what they were doing in the room. “Maybe she’s hungry!” Eridan suggests.

“Oh, great!” you snap. “What are we supposed to feed her?”

“I don’t know! I only feed myself and Fef’s Lusus!” Eridan yells back. “I doubt it eats Lusii-”

The wiggler’s chirring has reached a high-pitched whine that makes it impossible to think. You stand up and go for the first food you can think of, more of that instant cluckbeast soup that Eridan had chowed down on earlier in the night (or last night, technically, since at this point it was probably nearing evening). You prepare it while Eridan makes cooing noises that are of course totally ineffective at shooshing the wiggler.

You test the soup to make sure it isnt too hot - it seems fine, but you stir it around a few more times until it’s nearly cold, then you head back to the pile where Eridan looks ready to drop the wiggler and flee your hive. He tries to give you the wiggler but fuck that, someone’s got to feed the foul thing. “Hey, fuckface,” you address the wiggler, who does not even pause in its screech to ackwnowledge your existence - rude - but continues its unending noise until finally you’ve had enough and scoop a spoonful of the soggy cluckbeast noodles and shove them at the wiggler’s face.

She stops her screeching momentarily, and sniffs the soup. Then she lets out with the loudest, most obscene, excrement-extruding-like sound that has ever had the immense displeasure of impacting upon your auricular sponge clots, before she begins shrieking and trilling again, louder this time, as if that were a thing that was physically possible.

Eridan is scooting away, earfins plastered so flat they’ve practically disappeared into his hairline and the look on his face says to get that cluckbeast soup out of here _right now_ or so help me there will be hell to pay. Yeah well fuck you slimefins fishfuck, you were trying to help. You deposit the cluckbeast soup somewhere where you will probably forget all about it and find it much later with some sort of otherworldly fungus growing out of it but you can’t process anything right now the wiggler’s noise is eating a hole in your thinkpan and you scrounge around, finding some recently-fresh food, wave that temptingly under the wiggler’s nose. Eridan looks interested, eyes following the path the food takes, but the wiggler just makes another grotesque bodily-function-noise and refuses to so much as look at the food after that.

You swear under your breath, not even really paying attention to the words, it’s just a running commentary of your thinkpan, the words are just flowing right now and you are such a towering pile of rage right now you could easily just eat the wiggler just to be done with it and you scrounge around, finding some of gamzee’s fucking faygo and for one second you’re tempted, so tempted to just drown the wiggler in that nasty crap but then the urge is gone and you can’t drug a wiggler like that but you’re this close to self medicating with faygo and you move on, desperate to find something to eat when you realize that your hive is blessedly silent and for a moment you’re terrified, did Eridan go into some sort of highblood rage and _murder_ the tealblood wiggler and you turn around and -- She’s fucking gnawing on Eridan’s finger and he looks half frightened and half relieved as he watches you stalk back across the respiteblock.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he tells you. “She’s not drawing any blood,” he adds, and you just sort nod because honestly you couldn't care less right now. You fall into the pile next to him and cradle your head in your hands because she’s going to have to eat some time and you still have no idea what she wants and this is really too much to handle right now and there’s a strong, gentle hand, resting on your head, scruffing up your hair and it’s comforting and secure and _everything_ you need right now. Eridan has a moirail already, this isn’t right, but it feels so perfect and you curl up, feeling a deep vibrating chirr well up from deep down inside you and you cant hold it in and Eridan doesn’t say anything, just gently scrubs the soft pads of his fingertips, edged with those sharp claws, ever-so-gently against your scalp, playing with your unruly hair, gently detangling snags and you find yourself sinking back into a restful slumber.

“I hope she fucking eats your finger,” you hear yourself muttering as you drift off and Eridan chuckles and says something probably pretentious and douchebaggish in reply but you’re too tired to hear whatever it is, and you sleep.

* * *

 

 Kar looks fuckin exhausted, lying there, so still, eyes shut, dark lashes playing over his round cheeks, deep circles under his eyes that tell of countless nights of too much worry and not enough sleep. He’s chirring ever-so-slightly in his sleep and if that isn’t fuckin adorable you don’t know what is. The little gal is still gently gnawing on your finger and while she hasn’t broken your tough seadweller skin yet it is starting to feel a little tender.

“You feel like layin’ off anytime soon?” you ask her, and she looks at you and chirrs contentedly, like chewing on your finger was all she ever wanted in life. “You know, if you could talk, this would be easier for both of us,” you tell her.

She doesn’t indicate that she understands at all, just continues her attempts to break the skin over your second knuckle. You sigh.

“What do you eat?” you try again. Nothing.

Kar is going to erupt with copious quantities of wrath if he wakes up and you still haven’t figured out what she eats, so you decide to carefully extricate yourself from the pile, though Kar makes the most adorable little chirring whines when you do, his hands clutching at your clothes, trying to curl up against you, pull you closer and hold you tightly. You feel your gills heat up a little as you gently pry him off of you because if that isn’t just the most pitiable thing you’ve ever seen… you shake your head, dislodging those thoughts because you don’t have time for that right now, you have a wiggler to feed before Kar wakes up. You see food scattered all over the place, Kar seemed to have been pretty frantic, not that you blame him, she’d been making quite a fuss. Still. his reactions had seemed frantic, harried, like he had been viscerally responding to the cries in a way you couldn’t quite relate to or understand.

You tuck this thought into the back of your mind for further consideration at a later date - you are on a mission now, a mission to find food before this wiggler turns your finger into her first meal of the night. You try the same foods as Karkat had, just in case feeding her requred a gentler touch than had been provided by the rage-fueled troll with tiny horns as he’d spat harried curses under his breath while shoving spoonfuls of various nourishment in the face of the wiggler. However, she remains unimpressed by any of the options presented to her and in fact seems to much prefer chewing on your finger. You poke around a bit longer, briefly consider the faygo that's tucked away in a corner but decide against it.

You finally stumble across some roe cubes, and, almost absently, wave one in her face, not really expecting much. She stops chewing, her face following the roe cube. You pause, carefully bringing the roe cube up to her face. She seems to sniff it carefully, then takes the whole cube into her mouth at once, swallowing it whole. You’re shocked for a moment, then shrug. Roe cubes aren’t exactly your style - you’re more of a sea creature steak on a bed of fresh kelp kind of troll - but roe cubes definitely aren’t the worst thing you’ve ever eaten. You feed her a few more, and she looks at you expectantly, so you give her a few more.

Before you know what's happened you've fed her nearly the whole container and you're beginning to wonder exactly how big her stomach is and does she look a little queasy? You feel a sinking in your chest right before she looks you in the eye and her mouth opens and OH IT SMELLS SO BAD AND YOU’RE COVERED IN SLIMY REGURGITATED ROE AND IT’S ALL OVER EVERYTHING AND YOUR SHIRT, YOUR SCARF, YOUR EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN ROE DID SHE EVEN EAT THAT MUCH WHERE DID ALL OF THIS ROE COME FROM SURELY SHE HADN’T EATEN THAT MUCH OH and that’s when you realize you’re shouting, and Karkat is shouting, and the wiggler is screaming, and you’re still covered in roe, and this... 

this is going to be a long night


End file.
